32 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



Sciences at Paris, where lie filled the Chair of Chemistry; 

 subsequently he became a member of the Institute and a 

 Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He travelled through 

 Italy and visited Egypt as a member of the Scientific Commis- 

 sion. On his return from Egypt Napoleon loaded him with 

 honours and marks of distinction, and conferred upon him the 

 sum of 100,000 francs in compensation for the large expendi- 

 ture into which he had been led in his zeal for science. At his 

 country house at Arcueil, near Paris, where he died in the year 

 1822, he always gave a welcome to every votary of science, and 

 thus promoted an interchange of thought among the intellec- 

 tual men of the day. The most distinguished men were 

 included among the 6 Society of Arcueil ' a name assumed by 

 this brilliant assembly to whom was due the publication of a 

 periodical bearing the title of ' Memoires d' Arcueil.' It was 

 amid this circle that Humboldt first met Gray-Lussac, at that 

 time his violent opponent, but who subsequently became his 

 sincere and devoted friend. The genus Bertholletia was so 

 named by Humboldt and Bonpland in honour of Berthollet, 

 of which the grandest species Bertholletia excelsa is the 

 Juvia or Brazil-nut tree, one of the largest trees of the primeval 

 forests in the central parts of Brazil, bordering the Amazon, 

 In its colossal fruit are contained those hard three-cornered 

 nuts, similar in flavour to the cocoa-nut, which abound in all 

 the fruit markets of Europe, and pass among the ignorant as 

 palm-nuts. Berthollet received from his friend Humboldt the 

 sobriquet of ' Ammonia ' from the circumstance that in his 

 numerous chemical investigations he had devoted special atten- 

 tion to the analysis of ammonia. 



The chemists Fourcroy and Vauquelin next come in review. 



Antoine-Francois Fourcroy r , the elder of the two, was bora 

 in 1755; he took an active part in the events of the Revolution, 

 was elected a deputy in the National Convention, and a member 

 of the Council of Five Hundred, and was afterwards appointed 

 Director-General of Public Instruction. In this capacity he 

 organised the medical schools of Paris, Montpellier, and 

 Strasburg, and instituted throughout France not only various 

 schools of law, but many scientific societies ; chemistry, however, 

 claimed most of his attention, and in this branch of science he 



